The Daily Grind: Does powergaming ruin the MMORPG experience?

A recent article on Kotaku tells the author’s tale of being powerleveled by a friend through Diablo III. “You might think that there’s no ‘wrong’ way to play a game like Diablo III,” Jason Schreier wrote. “This is incorrect. Somehow, I figured out how to pull it off.” Being mindlessly powerleveled through the game, gear spewing from every mob faster than he could loot it and levels zipping by faster than he could respec, basically sapped the fun out of the game, he argued, and he didn’t begin to enjoy himself until his well-meaning, all-powerful buddy logged out and left him to roll a new toon and play by himself at his own noobish pace.

Power-leveling or powergaming has long been seen as a serious sin in some gaming circles and the height of enlightenment in others, and I can’t say it’s ever ruined my enjoyment of a multiplayer ARPG like Diablo III — in fact, sometimes I seek it out. But an MMORPG is a different beast altogether, especially if the point of the MMORPG is exploration, character development, or economy. Rushing can ruin a game, but it can also get you past the boring part of a game and into the good stuff.

What do you guys think? Does powergaming ruin the MMORPG experience?

Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!

Gamers pay other people to have imagination for them. When you play a video game, you are wading in a cesspool of morons, bigots and uncurious assholes. You are truly slumming with the scum of the human race.

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3 years ago

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arktourosx

I’ve been doing Diablo 3 since ROS off and off with each season. I’m long past the point where playing the class legitimately through 1-70 has any real bearing to me because I know how the game really operates at 70. Once you hit 70, it’s all about the class sets and it’s the class sets that dictate how you play basically eradicating any benefit of learning the class 1-70. In fact Diablo 3 even recently with this patch took steps to accelerate people along that path by giving a free 6 set bonus that, with a proper build, can launch you straight into Torment VI within a day of hitting 70.

When applied to the MMO scope, however, we don’t really see that much different. Older games (Diablo 3 ROS was launched March 2015) constantly accelerate older game’s ability to level. So “power gaming” in MMO aspect has been around for quite some time and many older games actually help you further similar to Diablo 3. From aspects such as “Heirloom” items to help you level an alt quicker to straight up allowing power leveling by yourself without the need for another person. I look at something like GW2 where I have 19 characters and I use their Tomes of Knowledge to level all my alt characters up to 80. All of the characters left to level are duplicates so I gain nothing leveling them manually 1-80. So for me, I’m glad to have these systems in place.

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3 years ago

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captainzor

Avatar11 the internet already has one Edge Lord. It doesn’t need another.

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3 years ago

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ManastuUtakata

GrimlyFandango ManastuUtakata
He’s claiming the exact same thing as you are. Without citation, without evidence….to which again can be dismissed without evidence. /shrug

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3 years ago

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shaw sbst

Avatar11 Your comment<————————————————————————–> target

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3 years ago

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ZenDadaist

Eh, I subscribe to the classic ‘never powerlevel your first
character’ school of thought because you’ll ruin a fresh new experience.
First impressions happen only once, after all. Of course what the
current gaming market considers an acceptable time to progress through a
game from day 1 newbie to epic-bedecked raidleader via the ‘normal’
route is drastically shorter now than it was 10 years ago (a couple of
months vs several years).
That’s not to say you should
avoid all help; if anything having a friend you can ask stuff of and be
shown the ropes by is a great boon. But just being dragged through to
the end skipping 99% of the game and then having uber gear dumped on you
without any sort of appreciation of everything that got skipped is
pretty much skipping to the final chapter or turning on infinite
armour/ammo/lives. Even if you do go back, you’ve just spoilered
yourself thoroughly and it’s reduced to a time-motion-numbers study.

And
that’s all quite apart from the usual potential issues of not having
learned how to play your particular class/spec/role/character and not
having a thorough grounding in tha particular game’s
mechanics/logic/tropes etc.

EDIT: c’mon Livefyre, you can do this. Just post the damn thing >.< 6 tries and counting…

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3 years ago

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GrimlyFandango

ManastuUtakata it hasn’t been reasonably determined, just because the author of a badly written article says so. Its the author that needs to prove his/her assertions within the article. As can be seen most of the comments are regarding powerlevelling. Powergaming is a wholly different subject to what the article is talking about.

The comment from @dorn2 hits the nail on the head.

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3 years ago

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Avatar11

Another one of these articles again. Hmmm, ill bite.

Instead of making this a group hug argument and circle jerking around. Why don’t you just admit you suck at video games?? I used to admit i sucked until i got good. Thats the best way of playing games. Nearly everyone can do it. If you don’t. Developers will just add more items to the cash shop…
This is nearly 100% wrong with this genre. People don’t want to be challenged. So enjoy more cosmetics in your game. Because thats the number 1 focus of devs who don’t want to make a hard game in fear of losing customers. (and conveniently easier for them too).

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3 years ago

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ManastuUtakata

GrimlyFandango breetoplay Serrenity ManastuUtakata
“You can powergame without powerlevelling and you can powerlevel without powergaming. Your article is incredibly confusing as you have mixed/matched the terms while using an example of powerlevelling and provided no information about powergaming.”
…since power-leveling is a form powergaming as has been reasonably determined, it’s fairly ludicrous to think you are power-leveling without powergaming. I am sure you could argue that if you stretched the goal posts around enough, but this site is not really big on No True Scotsman nonsense.
BTW: On which authority are you making this claim if you are insisting on it?

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3 years ago

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PitPendragon

I understand the opinion of the Author, however, leveling ever and ever again in D3 is boring. The fun begins when you are 70 and at least in torment 1 where the best sets and ancient items can drop. That’s the time when you try to max out your character, going higher in torment levels and/or greater rifts. Of course, if someone tries to bring someone absolutely new to the game on that level, it takes a lot of fun, since bringing a class to 70 the first time is all about exploring the game.